Samie Sands - Through Space and Time

He grinned at Raegan, again glad to be next to her. She halfheartedly smiled back, his warmth radiating off of him, making it impossible not to feel a little happiness.

“I never thought about anything like that,” she replied, opening up just a tiny crack. More than she ever had done before. With everyone else she’d met along the way; she’d barely even given her name. “I didn’t ever think of anything past Earth. That was it for me.” She snorted out a little laugh. “How naïve I was.”

The sat in silence for a moment, before Miguel spoke out again. “I’m sorry I was weak back there. I know that’s a terrible thing for a man to admit, but I’ve spent the last decade relying on the help of others. I wanted to be brave so badly, that I totally messed up.”

Raegan beamed. She’d never been one to believe men should be the protectors, even before all of this. She was always the child wondering why the princess didn’t save herself rather than waiting for some dumb prince. It didn’t bother her that Miguel wasn’t as equipped for this world as her.

“It’s okay…” she started, but a warm, wet sensation trickling under her bottom, stopped her in her tracks.

Blood.

She looked down to see it pooling beneath her. All the adrenaline had caused her to forget she’d had a chunk torn from her, that she was injured. It was a good job they’d stopped. Continuing wouldn’t have gone down too well!

“Oh no,” she groaned.

“Don’t worry I have stuff in my backpack.” This was the one area Miguel was actually equipped for. He’d seen plenty of injuries and he knew just how to deal with them.

As he patched her up, preventing the wound from getting infected, he talked to keep her distracted.

“I’m sorry you got separated from your dad. That must have been hard.” She nodded as a reply. He hadn’t really expected her to say much, she clearly wasn’t ready yet. “He’s a good man though. I’ve always thought he’ll be the savior of the human race.”

“What if we don’t ever find him?” Raegan blurted out, completely shocking Miguel. He never expected an admission of that magnitude. Not this early on. He decided to put it down to the blood loss.

“Well will.” He sounded confident, more than he felt anyway. They would find him. They had to.

“Yeah.” She was shrinking back inside herself; he could see it.

“He’s going to be so damn proud of you. He knows you’re doing well, but I don’t think he knows you have been alone so…” he trailed off, just thinking how Alan was going to feel to know his daughter had been by herself since a very young age.

He also wondered what he’d think about the woman she’d become.

“That hurts.” She changed the subject rapidly.

“It will, but it’ll feel okay after a while.” He leaned in, examining his work, but as he glanced upwards and caught Raegan’s eye, all sorts of emotions flooded through him.

Including an unexpected overwhelming desire to kiss her.

Miguel bit down on his lip hard. He couldn’t have those feelings. He just… couldn’t. Firstly, they were inappropriate in this world. Secondly, she would never feel that way about him. In a million years. Thirdly, her dad would kill him. Literally, kill him. There was no way he’d be okay with this however much he liked him. To Alan, Raegan was still too young for dating and probably always would be.

No, they needed each other to survive—him more than her admittedly—but that was it.

Raegan caught the expression on his face. What was it? Was it… lust? No, she shouldn’t be so big-headed. It wasn’t like she had any idea about the opposite sex, nor did she have any interest in them, not when all the human race was living such a complex life. But the feelings that were inexplicably running through her, seemed to be mirrored in him too.

What should she do?

“Shall we get some sleep?” Miguel asked quickly, totally shattering the mood.

Raegan gulped, trying to swallow her pounding heart. “Er… yeah that makes sense.”

The night should have been a peaceful one. Both Raegan and Miguel knew that here, in this all-white dimension, there was nothing that could hurt them. There were no threatening beasts in the shadows, no beings who wanted to tear them limb from limb, nothing to disturb them all night long. It should have been a wonderful night. Yet both of them struggled with intense relentlessness.

There was something clinging in the air, a real sizzling sensation between them. Raegan felt it deeply, right in the pit of her core, but she didn’t know what to do about it. Her hands itched to reach across, to touch Miguel, almost as if she wanted to check that he was real and not a crazy figment of her imagination, but she resisted.

Once she overstepped that boundary, there would be no going back.

Raegan had only stayed alive this long by playing it safe. She couldn’t change that plan now. Even if the emptiness of this place made it feel like she could.

The emptiness and the safety could only last so long. Soon, reality would come back once more, and she couldn’t risk any kind of emotional attachments.

Bonds were always destroyed by death; she would not forget that.

Raegan eventually gave up the pretense. She stretched her arms high and acted like she was just waking up, just to give her something else to do other than lie around.

“Well, I don’t know if it’s morning or not,” she croaked. “But I think we should find a way out of here.”

She half expected Miguel to argue with her, but he couldn’t stand the tension either. It made him feel like he should be far braver than he was, so he agreed.

“Sure, sounds good to me. The more we move on, the closer we get to Earth.”

They both took some time gathering themselves up, procrastinating for reasons they didn’t want to admit, but soon the only thing they could do was start looking.

“This shouldn’t take us long,” Raegan said. “In a place like this.”

“Yeah, you’re right. We will see it quickly.”

Raegan hoped so. She didn’t want to be stuck in a place so barren it demanded awkward conversations to be had. While there was so much hanging in the air, each second felt like an hour.

“Is that it?” Raegan felt the presence of the exit hole before she saw it. “Yeah look, there!”

She raced to reach the hole, relief flooding her, with Miguel not far behind.

“Time to go then, I suppose,” he declared in a false happy tone.

They both stared into each other’s eyes for a few moments, knowing that if they made this leap and left this safe environment, then they were putting all of this on the back burner. Whatever it was between them. If anything were ever to happen, it would be in a place like this where there was no danger… a hard thing to come across in this existence!

It was the right decision to make, of course. They didn’t even really know each other, and emotional attachment was bad. But it wasn’t an easy choice all the same.

“Yep, let’s do it.”

“Okay.” Miguel sounded sad, defeated. He couldn’t keep his emotions hidden.

“Yeah.” In this word, Raegan said all she could without actually saying any words. She hoped it made sense.

They fell together, this time purposely reaching out for each other’s hands. Raegan knew this was dangerous territory. Whatever these feelings were for Miguel, they were something and that was already too much. If he were to go missing or die now, she’d be undeniably gutted. He hadn’t been around long, but it was already too long.